


Trio

by tarigwaemir (troisroyaumes)



Category: Cheotsarang | First Love (1996), Korean Drama
Genre: Community: citynextdoor, F/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-26
Updated: 2006-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:57:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troisroyaumes/pseuds/tarigwaemir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seoul from three different perspectives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trio

**Author's Note:**

> Written for citynextdoor's Big Insert-Fruit-Here challenge.

_Chan-hyeok_

To him, it was a palette of colors he had never seen before, from the lurid yellow of the traffic lights to the soft slate-blue of the Han river in the morning. He felt as if he had woken from the coma with newborn eyes: the shapes around him seemed both harsher and softer, brighter and denser.

He secretly liked to visit Namdaemun, even as he struggled with his crutches, and felt assaulted by the confusion of images. The open-air shops beneath their vinyl ceilings, clothes hung on uneven wirework, shoes and jewelry laid out in chaotic patterns, the dim half-colored light drifting in between the smoke from the roasting yams, the little old shopkeepers adjusting their aprons to stuff money into belted pouches, the crates and empty boxes that served as tables and seats, the black stains of jjajangmyeon sauce at the corner of certain mouths. His fingers itched to capture it somehow; he lifted his hands to frame the scenes although he could not contain them.

It taught him how to see. He could never see enough.

 

 _Hyo-gyeong_

It was not a lonely city. She went walking at night through the downtown districts, with their warm neon lights and crowded streets. She passed by the glossy shop windows with fashionable girls posing idly inside and paused to smell the steam coming from the food stalls through their rolled-up plastic doors. The street lamps seemed tall, tall, tall, stretching into sky, but not as tall as the buildings that surrounded her, that pressed around her, as if to embrace, to hold her.

How to discard these unwanted intimacies--these small moments of beauty--

She could see his hand trace out the curves of rooftiles and shadow-play on rice-paper walls, the small pools of lily pads planted next to sidewalk benches, the solemn profile of the mountains within the city. Again and again, it made her forget that he was gone.

 

 _Chan-woo_

His new apartment looked out on Gangnam, with its sleek towers and artificial parks. He took one glance at the magnificent panoramic view through the massive windows made of polarized glass and closed the curtains.

Sometimes, while bent over paperwork late at night, he would allow himself to close his eyes and remember the old familiar shortcuts across campus, the grand iron gates and the quiet moments before classes began in the cramped lecture halls. His narrow little room in the boarding house. The cosmos flowers that bloomed next to the steps every fall. The broken bookstrap that still sat somewhere at the bottom of his unopened suitcase. He looked up again at the chrome and mahogony decor of his modern office and quelled a restless sigh before turning back to his work.


End file.
